I know sometimes we look at art and say, "What motivated the artist? Why this canvas? What does it all mean?" Well, here's a website lovingly and intricately created to show that art can provide the platform for an engaging puzzle of logic. Spend a few minutes here and see if you can solve the puzzle of the Treasure Box. Fun!
Treasure Box
One of the things that is so nice that comes with owning an iPod is that, when you get tired of listening to music, you can listen to podcasts or audio books instead. Wired News picks up this thread thusly:
This summer, Hugh McGuire was searching for free audio books online from his home in Montreal. He didn't find very much.
So McGuire launched LibriVox by recruiting amateur readers to create audio files of works of literature. The project now includes almost two dozen complete works, including Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, Jack London's The Call of the Wild and other classic novels and poems.
Over the years, something I've found humorous are the various collections of misheard song lyrics put together in book form (The "'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy" collection), and all over the internet (just Google 'misheard song lyrics' sometime).
The fine folks at Snopes.com present their collection each year, something they call "Mondegreens" (for an explanation, see the page) of misheard song lyrics relating to holiday traditional carols and songs. There's even a link to send in your own misheard lyrics. I like Snopes because, in my day job working at a help desk, I am frequently sent emails on our company listserv from users wondering if a certain email they received is legit. I refer them to snopes.com and invariably the scam is there. Bookmark their site yourself for easy reference, if you haven't already.
Presented here, though, is their homage to Christmas lyrics misheard -- enjoy!
The Red and the Mondegreen
Here's a small holiday gift for you. If you're looking to spend a few minutes (or more) wasting some quality time online in a game, look no further. Mark Hurst has listed some of his favorite online games that, in his opinion:
[...]offer a "good experience" - good game design with an overall attention to quality. Unless otherwise noted, they're all free, online, and available right now.
Here in Ohio, snow is not just an occasional event in the winter; it's a way of life. If you live anywhere around the snow belt (Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown, etc.), you see "lake effect" snow that is produced from cold air whipping south and east over the Great Lakes, the result of which is to produce snow by the bucketful as the winds pick up slightly warmer air from the lakes and convert it into snow. Lots of snow. If you're a snow fan, yippee! After 40 years living around it, ehhh -- not so much.
But, witness the beautiful snowflake. A perfect crystal structure. What we see for the brief moment on our gloves or coat is beautiful, if fleeting. Also very, very small. What do these structures look like close up? I'm glad you asked. SnowCrystals.com has the scoop on snowflakes, and the close-up views are fascinating. Plus, they even go the home-brew route and grow their own flakes in the lab!
NOAA Question of the Month: What is Lake Effect Snow?
Snowflakes and Snow Crystals
If you're one of the lucky folks out there that recently got a new iPod, you were probably overjoyed at first (who wouldn't be? I sure was when I got mine!), but then wondered exactly what the inside story on this little wonder was. Is there more to it than just getting my music onto it and playing some tunes? Well, Apple launched a new website to deal with questions from newbies and pros alike.
From the intro page:
Whether you're a Mac or Windows user, iPod 101 contains tons of information that'll help you enjoy your iPod to its fullest and guide you on your way to becoming iTunes savvy (we're using iTunes 6 in our course materials). Get ready to walk through the virtual aisles of the iTunes Music Store; learn how to sync your music, contacts, calendars, and more; admire your pretty pictures (and force others to do the same); watch TV shows and video; and find out what to do when things don't go as planned.
I've visited Wikipedia before, and even blogged about it, in my previous blog. The basic idea is that Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia about everything and anything, with the articles being written by the general public. The articles themselves are constantly editable, as new information is learned, or people with expertise in a topic show up to burnish the edges. But, the concept always suffered from one flaw, in my opinion -- how am I to ultimately know whether what I'm reading has been fact-checked, and is as unbiased as possible? Well, that flaw is exposed in a big way in the following USA Today article, about an assistant to Robert Kennedy, Attorney General in the '60s . Form your own opinions, but this points to why I think there needs to be better research and fact-checking involved, somehow.
A false Wikipedia 'biography'
[Courtesy of USATODAY.com]
Wikipedia.com
Hey gang, sorry I'm a day or so off in posting this -- got busy at work. As you can see by the banners along the right side of my blog, I'm a Mozilla fan. Mozilla, creators of Firefox (stand-alone web broswer) and Thunderbird (stand-alone email client), have been my apps of choice for at least the last two years. They are fast, good with security, and cross-platform, too.
Well, the big news this week is that the latest release brings the Firefox browser to version 1.5. Go and grab it ASAP, especially if you use that security-poor, bug-ridden browser called I.E. for short (no bias here, LOL). And try out Thunderbird for your email, while you're at it. If you want it all, Mozilla ties web, email, IRC client and more all together in one app.
Firefox v1.5
[courtesy of Mozilla.com]
